5th November 2008: Tanjung Dawai Pelagic

Another early start; another long day in the sun on the cards!



Watching the nets go overboard! It took us several hours to find the first decent-sized shoal of anchovies - lots of time staring at the sea and some distant terns!



You can watch a video of the process here:

This is the signal the birds have been waiting for, and terns appear out of nowhere in large flocks.

This time the flocks were made up predominantly of Common and White-winged Terns. Interesting to see so many 'marsh terns' out in the open sea - we estimated 2,000 White-winged and saw only 1 Whiskered Tern.



Most of the White-winged were adults moulting into non-breeding plumage.



There were a few 1st winter-plumaged birds, but this was the best I could get of one.



The White-winged Terns seemed more anxious to perch on the net floats than to catch fish!



Bottoms up! They had quite a job to stay balanced on the bobbing floats!



Sometimes there were accidents!

The Common Terns were even more abundant; we estimated 3,000 from what we could see, but the actual number could have been far higher.







Adults were all in mid-wing moult. Notice the grey rump - supposedly a distinguishing feature of White-cheeked Tern.



Plunge-diving for anchovies caught in the net!



We could afford to let them have a few!



There were only a couple of hundred Bridled Terns around today. I think this must be a juvenile.



This might be an adult in non-breeding plumage.



And this looks like an adult moulting out of breeding plumage.




We saw very few Black-naped Terns today - perhaps only 5 or 6.



What's this coming out of the sun? Looks interesting!



What a beak it has!





In better light the mystery is solved - a superb Lesser Crested Tern - bird of the day!



We presented the fishermen with a poster of nine seabird-types - Bridled and Common-type terns, noddy, petrel, shearwater, tropicbird, frigatebird, jaeger and booby. The poster has our phone numbers on so they can call us if they see anything other than the terns. On seeing the poster, they immediately identified the birds they'd seen in June as petrels, on account of their tube-noses. When they checked Robson, they were unanimous in pointing to Bulwer's Petrel. There had been up to 7 birds for about a week, and, according to the fishermen, they appear every year in June at the time the westerly winds occur. There are currently no west coast records of Bulwer's Petrel, so we'll just have to wait for next June!

Like last trip, the highlight of the day was not a bird but a fish.



When I was watching the net being winched in, I saw a large dark shape swimming beneath it. Moments later, a Whale Shark surfaced! Note the Bridled Tern on the left which gives an idea of scale!





According to the books, Whale Sharks are supposed to be plankton feeders, but this guy or gal was definitely after fish - the ones in our net!



A Jaws-moment. It's BEHIND YOU!



Apparently this one was just a tiddler - only about 12 feet long we estimated. They can grow to 40 feet long! Still - it was an impressive-enough sight!



Coming in for another gum-attack on the net!



Here are some of Choo Eng's shots of the beast's approach.





Apparently these fish are very docile and friendly to swimmers and divers. So... after you! You can see the Cobia fish that accompany the shark everywhere, scavenging for food leftovers. For more info on cobias, see here (Thanks for the correction Choo Eng!). The Whale Shark's Malay name translates as 'black mother shark', and they call these fish her 'children'!























Steaming in not-so-docilely toward the net!

























Hungry shark!

Once we'd started moving again, after gathering in the catch, the shark followed in our wake for a while. I found it fascinating that it showed no fear toward us and seemed to associate the boat with food. What an amazing animal! It made the day for me, and was one of the most memorable experiences of my entire life I think. Now I want to see a forty-footer!

More photos from the Wader Workshop

I've just received some amazing photos from one of the participants of the KK Wader Workshop - Suhaino. He took these pics with his hand-phone, and I must say, I'm impressed!



Our first field trip location - Lok Kawi Beach















































Field Trip 2 - Penampang paddyfields



The last day - Likas Bay

30th October 2008: Perlis

Choo Eng and I chose one of the wettest days of the year to make the 3 hour or so journey up to Perlis. Birding was largely uninspiring (and confined to the car!), except for the few occasions when the rain stopped.



At Wang Kelian, where I had photographed hundreds of Red-rumped Swallows last March, there were some resident Striated (or Rufous-bellied) Swallows mixed in with hundreds of migratory Barn Swallows today.



They're pretty large!



And there's not very much striation going on on the underparts.



In flight, the fresh outer tail streamers are distinctively club-ended and straight, unlike Red-rumped.





The underpart colour is quite striking!



Near the swallows Choo Eng spotted a huge spider in the paddyfields. It was worth a closer look! See the blackish dot in the paddy to my left.



Told you it was big!



See the 'normal-sized' spider on the right. We couldn't work out if this was one of her offspring or her husband!



We weren't sure if this was a water-spider (unlikely with all that 'fur'?) or whether it's a land species that has been marooned by the flooding from all the rain. Can anyone help?



One last picture from Timah Tasoh lake. There were no Racket-tailed Treepies in sight, but this male Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker was some consolation.

29th October 2008: Swiftlets

Lord Cranbrook came to give a talk on swiftlets and swiftlet-farming for MNS today. In preparation for the talk, Choo Eng and I went to look at a couple of swiftlet farms near Sungai Petani.

Getting into a swiftlet farm is a bit like getting into a diamond mine, and I was advised not to take pictures of anything except the birds themselves.



Faces only a mother could love! The nest is made from saliva secreted from under the swiftlet's tongue. The 'white-nest' group of swiftlets (comprising several species) makes the nest purely of saliva, whereas Black-nest Swiftlets (one species) mix in at least 50% of their own feathers to make the nest. The few feathers in this nest are there by accident, from the parent birds as they were building the nest. Another difference between Black-nest and 'white-nest' swiftlets is that the former lay only one egg, while the latter usually lay two.























This is the 'porcupine' nestling stage, when most of the feathers are still in pin. You can see the plain, unfeathered tarsus, which is another distinguishing feature of the 'white-nest' group. Unlike passerines in Malaysia, which have a very sort nestling stage (around 2 weeks), swiftlets spend an extremely long time maturing in the nest - 'white-nest' swiftlets on average spend 45 days at the nestling stage. In their natural habitat, swiftlet nests are much less vulnerable to predation than passerines, which means that they can afford to take longer maturing.























By this time it looks as though the nest isn't big enough for both birds, or maybe this one just prefers hangin' out! Swiftlets normally breed three times in a calendar year, making them extraordinarily productive. This is good news for the swiftlet farmer. After birds have finished nesting, a proportion of the nests in the 'farm' are harvested. A kilo (roughly 100 nests) can fetch around US$1,200 (or GBP700)! Birds are highly faithful to nest sites, so will come back to rebuild a new nest at the site of the old one.























Two almost full-grown nestlings. So what are these birds, other than being one of the 'white-nest' species? Lord Cranbrook told us that the situation is complex. For one thing, the birds that have begun seeking out nest sites in buildings appear to be different (darker-rumped) than the birds that breed in caves, even within the same geographical area. For another, there are incidences of swiftlet-farmers importing swiftlet eggs from geographically different areas to be fostered and reared by swiftlets in their own farms. No-one is really sure how widespread a practice this is, and the industry is a notoriously secretive one.






















Here's an adult bird. The rump colour is difficult to judge in these lighting conditions. It seems to be pale, but not very pale! Could this be the darker-rumped 'amechana' subspecies of German's Swiftlet, which is supposed to occur naturally in this area?





These were taken over the swiftlet farm, so there's a reasonable chance that these are the adults from the colony.



This one is easier! Here's a Pantala flavescens. These dragonflies are one of the commonest around, often occurring in quite dense swarms over open areas. I've never seen one perched!



The talk on swiftlets took place on Penang Hill. Afterwards we were treated to amazing views of the city at night.



And a couple of resident Wagler's Pit Vipers - this juvenile ...



... and here's an adult. Looks mean!